New Idea

[Yomikibagami]

Me and a friend were thinking today about a new feature. I think that under our profile there should be a rating button or something that will show a pie graph or something with the average difficulty of the caches that each person goes to. Something that shows from 2 to ten, where you just add the terrian and difficulty of the cache together to make the graph.

[+leatherman]

However I think that should be left to someone with more or available resorces, other than GeoCaching.com.

Like Dan's Stats Page. It could another entertaining resource I'm sure.

 

Preperation, the first law to survival.

[+jhwf44]

Not a bad idea, but there are many other more important features that I would like to see added first that have been brought up. I agree and mayb this could be something for Dan's Stat Page

 

jhwf4

[Rubbertoe]

Personally, I don't really want to see anything added that makes this more of a competition sport than a hobby. It is good to know how many caches people have found and hid, and if they have any travel bugs... but I've heard suggestions of scoring methods, adding graphs based on ratings, etc - and I have to say that I don't think it is a good idea.

 

On another site, maybe... but not here on the pages - we don't want the newbies to feel that they have to compete with the rest of us.

 

Rubbertoe - Webcam - Image Archives

--== http://www.bigfoot.com/~rbatina ==--

[Rubbertoe]

Personally, I don't really want to see anything added that makes this more of a competition sport than a hobby. It is good to know how many caches people have found and hid, and if they have any travel bugs... but I've heard suggestions of scoring methods, adding graphs based on ratings, etc - and I have to say that I don't think it is a good idea.

 

On another site, maybe... but not here on the pages - we don't want the newbies to feel that they have to compete with the rest of us.

 

Rubbertoe - Webcam - Image Archives

--== http://www.bigfoot.com/~rbatina ==--

[+LarsThorwald]

Don't need it, IMHO.

 

Charlie

 

"One should never begin a journey by heading in the wrong direction."

[+The Leprechauns]

Funny you should bring this up, I have done this calculation a couple of times for my own finds. (Add up the ratings for each cache and divide by the total number of finds.) It is a nice way to track progress as the Leprechauns moved from doing 1/1 caches when we just got started, to a recent 5/3 cache, a 3/4 multicache, etc. We are now at an average rating of 2/2.

 

All that being said, I have NO interest in comparing those statistics to anyone else, or in seeing them posted on the site or another site. Everyone has different reasons for geocaching and different constraints. For example, most of the time, I am caching with my 8 yr old daughter which rules out some of the more challenging caches. Or, if someone has a physical limitation, achieving a bunch of 2/2 caches is a great accomplishment!

 

Another reason not to do this: subjective variations in the ratings assigned by different hiders. One person's 1/1 may be another person's 3/3. If average difficulty ratings were posted, there would be a flurry of e-mails to cache owners, begging them to adjust the difficulty ratings to a higher number.

 

IMHO, there is just about the right amount of friendly competition already, maybe too much, between this site and the Dan Miller Stats page.

 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Next time, instead of getting married, I think I'll just find a woman I don't like and buy her a house."

[+MartyFouts]

I think it's fine for those who want to set up a competitive geocaching approach to do so, but I'd just as soon they don't use geocaching.com to do it.

 

First, as a cache finder, I don't want to be rated, and I don't want to see ratings -- there's already a web site that does that for people who care.

 

Second, as a cache hider, I don't want to get into issues with people about whether or not my cache ratings match their expectation of the rating system. I want feedback on that, and I'll adjust ratings if the feedback is convincing, but I don't want someone blathering on that my ratings are 'unfair' to some competition.

 

Marty

[+Harrald]

You could...........but it would be a disappointing number. I spoke to a cacher about this

very topic. He has quite a few more finds than I do (a couple of hundred more) and the

average is low. Unless you only hunt high level caches your average will drop like a stone.

My average is low and I’ve found some pretty difficult caches. The problem is I hunt

anything in my area.

 

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As always, the above statements are just MHO.

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[Team Dragon]

The Arizona geocaching community has something like that available at the awesome web site of:

 

http://www.azgeocaching.com/

 

Just check out the team stats.

[+sbell111]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Harrald:

The problem is I hunt anything in my area.

---

 

I agree. This average will most often not give you a acurate representation of a cacher's experience. It will only give you an idea of what caches are in the cacher's geographic area.

 

These statistics based on terrain and difficulty may be interesting on a geographic basis, but it would be a mistake to try to attribute them to individual cachers.

[dboggny]

who cares

 

SR and dboggny. Oh man, my mother in law is here

[sbhikes]

Where I live (Santa Barbara) it is quite mountainous with a hiker's paradise of rugged trails only 10 minutes from downtown -- or less! How could you compare my scores to someone who searches mostly in, say, Florida, or Kansas? And sometimes the strenouousness of the getting there is less difficult than actually finding the cache!